


We Will Make Each Other Whole

by ChemicalChance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChemicalChance/pseuds/ChemicalChance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa was happy at her brother and his wife's side until the Lord of Casterly Rock came north.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will Make Each Other Whole

Sansa knew Jon misliked her new companion.

Jon could mislike it all he wished; she loved him with all her heart but he had renounced the right to say anything of any man she kept in her company when he’d refused her hand. The Dragon Queen had said they should be wed, of course, but they’d both balked. “Half-brother” or no, the revelation that Jon was her cousin and shared less blood with her than they had thought could not be undone by mere parentage, by something that had happened before either of them had even been born. Sansa thought she could have agreed to it, perhaps; she could have grown used to it if Jon had reacted with anything less than unmitigated horror. She had known far worse men than Jon Snow – Jon Stark rather than Targaryen, a concession the queen had granted reluctantly and mostly at Sansa’s behest, a boon she had begged at the sombre look in her brother’s eyes. Sansa wondered how it might had been, sometimes - if Jon looked at her with her father’s eyes, she was very nearly broken enough to appreciate it. 

But Jon had refused to wed her with utter vehemence, not least because of Sansa’s own reticence. He had refused to wed her, and he had offered her Winterfell despite the fact that it had been given to him by the queen’s decree, but Sansa had rejected him just as Jon had rejected her hand. She could play the game; oh, she knew all too well she could, but she’d no taste for it anymore. Brother or husband, she hadn’t thought to ever want to leave Winterfell or Jon’s side again, not when she’d felt the absence of her family so keenly over the years that had passed. Jon would have had to go south to serve at his aunt’s side if he had abdicated Winterfell. There had been something guilty and regretful in Jon’s eyes when she’d refused to relieve him of his seat, but as she’d predicted, he’d offered her all Winterfell had to offer for as long as she wished to avail herself of it. She could have kissed him, then; she wished he would have let her. Her old home and her only living brother’s company were all she ever thought to want from life, after what she had endured.

Jon called her little sister as always, planted chaste kisses on her brow as he’d never have dared and she would never have allowed him when they were young, and Sansa called him brother as she never had as a child. She did not dwell on the thought that perhaps being his wife might not have been as terrible a thing as they had both first thought. Jon had wed Jeyne Westerling . Whether it was for honour, or stability, or in Robb’s memory, Jon never shared, but they had a babe now, a boy they both loved fiercely whom neither of them had had the heart to name for Robb or Ned, though Sansa knew they had thought of it, and Sansa was happy enough with her life as it was, safe and amongst people who truly cared for her for her own sake.

Then the Lord of Casterly Rock had come north. Tyrion Lannister had won his ancestral home along with the queen’s favour in the war that had raged in the dead of winter. Jon had not greeted him icily; no, he had been quite gracious, but very nearly the first thing he’d said was that Tyrion would not have his sister, that he would not claim her by right of their forced marriage. The man the smallfolk had used to call The Imp had looked almost ashamed of himself, then, in a way the man Jon and Sansa had known as little more than children never could have. No, Tyrion said, addressing her and Jon both, he had only come north to put the sham of his marriage to Sansa to rest, that she might be free to wed again without shame or controversy. He said he owed them that much after all the havoc his house had brought upon their own.

That was all he had had to say for Sansa to know she was looking on a changed man, though she’d known it the second she laid eyes upon him, even though her heart had leapt into her throat with a sickly twisting sensation at the sight of him. He’d aged at least a decade since she had seen him last no more than five years ago, and though she’d heard the tales she’d never seen the extent of the disfigurement he’d earned at the Blackwater in the service of the family that had betrayed him so completely. She had seen the wound new, of course, but it had healed and now and ugly knot of scarring sat where his nose had once been. He had always moved in a manner affected by his stunted limbs, but now he looked as though it pained him to walk, and he was more hideous even than he’d been when Sansa had first been wed to him.

And yet it no longer repulsed her. After a long winter spent at the lacking mercies of Petyr Baelish, physical beauty had come to mean little enough to Sansa. Her little nephew Raynald was perfect, but that was all the thought she could bear to spare for appearances. Men could have uglier souls than they ever could faces; she’d learned that well enough. Jon had offered Tyrion Winterfell’s hospitality readily enough once he’d renounced his claim to Sansa, and her brother and the man who had been her husband sat up late that night, swapping stories sad and comic almost as though they were lost kin. Perhaps they were, in a sense, even if they were only bound by what they had been left bereft of. Yet Jon had wound up deeper in his cups than the man who had been her husband, and Jon was not especially susceptible to overindulgence. Tyrion drank, and he drank deeply enough to be polite, but he did not drink with the determined ardour of the man Sansa had known. He had made Jon and Jeyne laugh, as quick with a jape as always, but his wit was not as acerbic as it had once been, though it was every bit as self-deprecating.

Jon had looked unsure of himself; he had looked as though he wished to deny her something for the first time since they had reunited when Sansa had said she would see their honoured guest to his chambers, but Sansa had offered to do so freely, and her brother had known it, and so he did not gainsay her. Tyrion himself had sworn every oath he knew in trying to assure her she owed him nothing, as they made their way through the keep, but it was only because Sansa had already known as much that she escorted him. She meant no impropriety, only courtesy, and yet she had found herself in his chambers anyway, though nothing had happened between them that night. Her voice had quavered as it never did anymore when she asked him whatever had happened to him, and his had been uncharacteristically unsteady when he had asked her the same. They had both tried to speak of it and failed. Too much had happened to mention, they had both agreed, too much to burden one another with as yet, more than either of them might ever wish to share. Littlefinger and the other Lannisters were gone, most of them dead and Jaime disappeared, and that was enough, though Sansa sensed that Tyrion still wished he might find his elder brother.

That lingering sadness in him had rent a hole within her for her own lost siblings, and she had found herself babbling to him of Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon as she never could stand the thought of doing with Jon; she found herself sobbing as she had not dared to in years. Tyrion Lannister had wed her against her will, true, but it had been no more his choice than hers. He had treated her more gently than many other men would, though he had had the right not to, and he had come back to prove her thoughts correct in setting her free.

She was not entertaining thoughts of rekindling their marriage when she kissed him that night, but nor was she only meaning to thank him for his kindness. She had kissed him because she had wanted to, and though Tyrion had kissed her back, he’d begged her to leave him when they had parted. He would have no more women who felt they owed him something, he said, and so Sansa must go.

When she thought on it alone in her chambers later that evening, anger set to boiling in her belly. Other than Jon, who she cared for out of sisterly sentiment, she had not done anything she had truly wished to do for a man in years, and to be rebuffed so stung, not because of his rejection but because of the unfairness of it all. She had lost almost half her life as a result of her pursuit of the beautiful, privileged monster his nephew had been, and Tyrion had refused to bed her against her will when she had been young, despite his clear desire – but now he’d not even kiss her when she came to him willingly?

Sansa had been distant the next day and drunk more than she was accustomed to the next evening, alone in her chambers, and Jeyne had sought her out with concern; it was unlike her to seclude herself in the evenings. Sansa had sent her away kindly, and Jeyne had gone reluctantly. Sansa was not truly drunk, had never been able to afford herself that luxury in her life, but she had had enough to be bold. She returned to Tyrion’s chambers not truly knowing what she meant to do, but when he opened the door at her knock she could not help but kiss him. She had had to sink to her knees to do so, kicking the door shut behind her, but it did not seem unnatural, not when she had thought of doing so all day.

He had issued a stream of feeble protests, but Sansa had hushed every one with a kiss or a nip or a hand delved into his breeches and their coupling had been fast and urgent. Sansa had perched atop him as if to deny him the right to turn her away, though his breathless gasp when he’d sunk inside her had put any thought of his turning her away to rest. She thought she had wept when they’d finished that night, overwhelmed by having _chosen_ to lay with a man as she’d never done before, but he had said nothing, only kissed the tears from her cheeks and curved a hand around her hip. She was a woman with a woman’s desires, and she had found they were not at all what she had thought they would be when she was a girl.

On the morrow, Tyrion had tried to tell her she was free to leave as though nothing had happened, that he had tasted the wine on her tongue and a woman abused as she’d been should be able to engage in such folly without disgrace, but Sansa had only silenced him with a kiss and then drawn herself up on her palms and looked down at him, though she didn’t truly mean to make him feel small. She’d asked him just what it was he thought he could have forced her to do, a little archly, and Tyrion had thrown his head back and laughed as she had not heard him do since before they were wed.

They had not stopped falling into bed since, and they had begun spending most all of their days together. They wandered the rebuilt glass gardens and Tyrion wove flowers into her hair with the only half felt admonishment that she mustn’t tell her brother. Raynald grew to love the sight of Tyrion, crying out with unadulterated infantile glee at the sight of him. They sat with Jeyne on her idle afternoons, talking freely, and Tyrion began to resemble the man Sansa had known, quick with a crooked smile or a jape that made Sansa and Jeyne both laugh as if they were girls again. Tyrion and Jon spent hours together, resolving the problems Winterfell’s restoration posed. They never mentioned Sansa, she was sure, for even their newfound camaraderie had not changed the unpleasant set Jon’s mouth took when he caught Sansa and Tyrion in some casual act of intimacy.

The early evenings she might have spent before with Jon and Jeyne in Jon’s solar were spent in her chambers or Tyrion’s own, over a flagon of wine, a book, or simple conversation, or just as often tangled in their sheets. In the daylight, Tyrion was impeccably respectful; he never let his eyes or his hands linger overlong, but Sansa found she was always touching him in not-quite-innocent little ways, a hand on his shoulder or her fingers resting over his own. Jon watched them with hot-eyed mistrust, but when he found nothing between them that Sansa did not initiate, he held his tongue. For her part, Jeyne watched them with a knowing softness upon her face and did her best to distract Jon with her kisses and their son. Sansa was grateful for her good-sister’s efforts at refocusing her brother’s attention; he guarded Sansa as fiercely as a mother bear might her cub. She loved him for it, but that did not mean his affection was never misguided.

Later, when Tyrion had lingered at Winterfell for more than a month, longer than was at all proper, Jeyne revealed something that seemed to remove Jon’s attention from Sansa and Tyrion completely: the new babe growing in her belly. There was something naked in Jon’s expression that Sansa had never seen on her brother’s face before, at the news – their first son had been conceived the night of their marriage, when they had lain together more of obligation than desire, when Jon’s guilt over wedding his brother’s widow to had nigh eclipsed whatever desire he’d had for the still pretty young girl he’d taken to wife, but it had grown plain to see that the Lord and Lady of Winterfell cared for one another, truly, in a way that was not born of obligation or Sansa and Jon’s brother’s spectre. Jon kissed his wife more freely after that; he loved Jeyne openly in a way that brought Sansa’s parents to mind with a tender ache in her heart.

It was not long after Jeyne’s announcement that Sansa got the courage to point out that Tyrion must have duties to attend to at home. She did not know what had brought it on – it seemed she seldom did, with Tyrion – but the reality of their situation had been sinking in for a long while, by then. She had known she must eventually lose him or wed him anew, and neither had been entirely appealing. She had never wanted to wed again; she was happy at Jon and Jeyne’s side as an ersatz dowager aunt, but she had begun to feel she would not be happy without Tyrion’s presence at her side, and she knew she could not have both. Jon would keep her as long as she wished; he had sworn he would never marry her to anyone to cement any sort of allegiance, but neither had he given her permission to wed as she chose. It was not as if she needed his permission, precisely, but she wanted it nonetheless. Her brother had grown dearer to her than she’d ever thought possible in her youth, and she no longer had it within her to wound the only living man with whom she had shared a childhood.

Tyrion had faltered much as Sansa had herself when she’d told him that he must soon return to Casterly Rock. He was as conflicted as she was, she was sure, about the situation they had found themselves in. She’d gotten so she couldn’t imagine life without him at her side, but she knew that staying with him meant abandoning her life as she knew it, and she had never known true security anywhere south of Winterfell.

In the end, she went to Jon. A hundred explanations must have fallen brokenly from her lips, that she knew their marriage was no more – that she knew it had never been officially annulled – but that she loved him nonetheless and couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving (she’d never told Tyrion as much, she’d simply thought he knew). She told Jon that she’d chosen to be with Tyrion, this time, and that she knew she’d have to leave. She told Jon how it broke her heart to leave what was left of their family, but that she must. She babbled many other things before Jon quieted her and took her into his arms, bushing his lips across her brow. _He will wed you beneath a weirwood at Winterfell, then, as he ought to have the first time,_ was all Jon said, and Sansa had been ashamed of herself for ever doubting her brother.

Tyrion was as doubtful as he had ever been when Sansa told him what she’d done a moon later, as soon as she'd built up the resolve. Tyrion had been as hand shy as Jon had been as a boy at the revelation, even though he had grown to be relaxed in her company. He had tried to dissuade her until Sansa had spitefully asked him if he really meant to deny her hand. They were sat in the Godswood at the time, and Sansa had pressed him against her breast at his feeble statement of, _I won’t have you feel that you must…_

She didn’t feel that she must, and that alone was the reason she chose him. Tyrion fastened a red and gold cloak over her as she knelt the way the first time she’d married him. She did not feel the shame she had the first time, not with Jeyne beaming at her beatifically with her swollen belly pressed against Jon’s side, and her brother and his son both wearing the same grave if not displeased expression that her father might have. She did not relish the thought of being the Lady of Casterly Rock, she had no taste for such things anymore, but if it was what she must be to keep Tyrion Lannister at her side, then she would do it.

Jon and Jeyne had nearly wept at bidding her their farewells, and Raynald had, but Sansa had done as she must without much sorrow in her heart. It was only when she had sealed her fate and was on her way south with her husband that she realized she had not bled in two moons.


End file.
